Why bother being offended at the label? Humans have a need to compartmentalize. It's no big deal....if you're a liberal and you agree with this, who cares? It's not a potshot, is a counter-argument, just like most of what HungryPete and others have said. Well, some people have made some really lame personal attacks, but HP and others have done well in avoiding that. This article, is also an editorial--it's an opinion, just like everyone else has, and it's worth exactly as much. So why get pissed? Besides--getting mad at your countrymen is just playing into terrorists' hands!
I'm a liberal, and I disagree with this article in part, but why should I be offended at it? That's just dumb. I DO resent Rumsfeld's comment about "Changing the way THEY live." While we definitely need to make some "repairs" to the Taliban regime and it's little terrorist summer camps, that does not give us a license to be imperialist. We often "impose" ourselves on countries that do not need our "help." We ignore countries that do need our help.
I don't blame Clinton for bloodshed in the Balkans, we did what we thought was right to protect innocent people. Just like Panama, Grenada, Vietnam and Korea.
The problem is that while we assist people in Eastern Europe who happen to be white, we almost completely ignore people in Africa, Asia and South America who are non-white, yet appear to be in a similar plight. We do little to help Tibet, but we rushed into Kuwait on the quick. Why? Because we have financial interests in Kuwaiti oil. We stay out of Central American politics, unless we think it has something to do with "The War On Drugs." We turn a relatively blind eye to human rights abuses on our own soil and the world over unless those abuses are being perpetrated by communism or other enemies of "The American Way."
The kind of "Justice" handed out by the US is not equal-opportunity, and it is usually not completely altruistic, in fact we usually don't "offer" our aid unless we have something to gain from it.
And that is what sparks the kind of anti-Americanism that we see in so many places. Not to mention, they want a scapegoat and they aren't at liberty to criticize their own crap governments, so they choose ours.
We're considering a two-pronged attack. We should add a third prong--trying to get along with the global community. If we're going to help one group of refugees, we should help other refugees, even if we can't use that as a bargaining chip for petroleum prices. If we're going to attack one perpetrator of human rights abuses, we should attack all of them, even if we don't see them as an immediate threat to the American way. If a conflict does not involve us, even if it could cost us some money down the line, we should stay out of it unless our assistance is requested. Or, we should be the worldwide mediator and jump in and quell any problems....although I think the latter option would be hard to carry out, so we should just try to be fair and even.
But trying to tell others how to live, as Rumsfeld would put it, smacks of countless fallen "Empires" and "Missionaries." It's no good.
I'd like to pose a lame analogy to go along with the lame "Rat" and "Battered Wife" analogies in the article: Imagine America as a powerful parent, and other less fortunate countries as children looking to us for guidance. When one child inexplicably gets all kinds of love and aid, while another, who behaves the same way keeps getting smacked, the unhappy kid is going to get mad, and he's going to lash out. Some kids lash out against their brothers. Some kids lash out against the parents.
Maybe we have to treat them like delinquent kids, but we also have to treat the kids fairly.
Dumb analogy, right? I agree, but it makes the point in the half-arsed and overly-simplistic way that only analogies can.
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